Skip to main content

Moving to Bolton


I've been putting off reporting this on here because I wanted to make sure I'd contacted people before hand. If you do know me in real life, and this is the first you're hearing about this, accept my apologies for not telling you earlier.
I've been appointed as minister of Bank Street Unitarian Chapel in the town centre of Bolton (just outside Manchester for Americans and southerners with no sense of geography). I start in September. It's a good congregation and there's lots of potential for some interesting ministry.
I hope it goes without saying that the opinions expressed in this blog will remain mine, and not the congregation's in any way. I was almost tempted not to even reveal the name of the congregation on here but this is really silly because if you're a British Unitarian you'll either already know or be able to look it up very easily, and if you're not you could still look it up easily in a Google search.
I'm really happy for the next step to be sorted and something I don't have to worry about anymore. Just need to finish my studies now.

Comments

Scott Wells said…
Congratulations!
Glen Marshall said…
Call to Bolton: good news
Finishing Studies: good idea
Rich said…
Congratulations, Stephen.

Popular posts from this blog

Swords into Ploughshares

  "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Isaiah 2:4 Palestine Action are doing just this: beating swords into ploughshares i.e. putting weapons out of use. In doing so they are fulfilling this biblical mandate. They are expressing God's peace as expressed in the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition. God desires that our swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, that we should unlearn war. That the government wants to make this action illegal has to be confronted in the strongest terms. To rush to condemn attacks on weapons but not attacks on children is perverse. To call attacks on weapons terrorism but not attacks on children is perverse. When government comes to such an extreme position - legislating that peace is war, that weapons need more protection than children - then they have fundamentally gone wrong. This is the definitio...

Is humanism theologically tolerant?

OK, well this might be controversial, but I feel the need to say it. Is humanist tolerant? Please note I'm not asking about humanism within society. Clearly humanism certainly believes in tolerance within society and I'm forever glad they are often the only people in the media calling for a separation of church and state. No, what I'm talking about is descriptions of Unitarianism like this and adverts like this , discussed at Peacebang here , which say that humanism is one option, Christianity is another, God is one option among many. The trouble is, humanism, by definition is theologically opposed to theism. This is very different from the relationship between Christianity and Buddhism. These two traditions may be vastly different, but Buddhism, by definition , is not opposed to Christianity, and Christianity, by definition , is not opposed to Buddhism. But humanism is consciously defined in opposition to Christianity and theism. So to say that humanism and theism can bot...

Drop the Free Christian!

Let me preface what I'm going to say by first saying this: I am a Christian. It's taken me a long time to be able to say that, and to know what I mean by that, and I'm very lucky that in the Unitarian church I have been given the space to come to that decision in my own time, on my own terms. But I am a Christian, I'm more Christian now than I have been for years. Now: I want us to drop this "Free Christian" from our title. It's a silly phrase that we need to get rid of. Why? "The General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches" is a long and unwieldy title. It would be much better if we traded under something like "Unitarians in Britain." It gives the impression that there are two separate and distinct groups: "Unitarians" and "Free Christians," this is not the case. It's not that there are Unitarians (who are not Christians) and "Free Christians" who are not Unitarians. There are not two dif...